Has read Origin and considers it one of the most valuable contributions to present-day natural history. Believes, however, that there are difficulties in the extensive generalisation that all taxonomic groups are related by descent. Does not understand how Genesis is to be read unless at least the human species was created independently of other animals. Cannot bring himself to the idea that man’s reasoning and moral sense could have been obtained from "irrational progenitors": the "Divine Image" is the unsurmountable distinction between man and brutes. [See 2644.]

Thanks LJ for his letter on Origin. Finds LJ agrees with him more than CD had expected.

Discusses problems of geological record, single primordial form, and man.

No summary available.

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Thanks CD for his contribution to the memoir of Henslow [L. Jenyns, Memoir of the Rev. John Stevens Henslow (1862)].

Sends proof-sheets of CD’s contribution to LJ’s Memoir of Henslow.

CD has sent to printer proofs of his contribution to Memoir of Henslow.

Thanks LJ for Memoir of Henslow; thinks it will be invaluable as an example to other clergymen.

Pleased with CD’s opinion of the Henslow Memoir [L. Jenyns, Memoir of the Rev. John Stevens Henslow (1862)]

Asks LJ which British birds are polygamous. His query relates to the possession by the male of secondary sexual characters.

CD is also interested in the numerical proportion of the sexes in birds.

Asks about the use of the horns in male lamellicorn or coprophagous beetles.

On polygamous birds and the pairing of birds. Late singing of males. [see Descent 2: 107.]

Thanks LJ for his useful facts. Will "look to" the reference about the nightingale.

Sends his notes on Florent Prévost’s reference to the habits of the cuckoo.